


Red Dawn Rising

by Accidentallytechohazardous



Category: Bleach
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Renji Likes Kids Even if Kids Don't Always Like Renji
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-03 20:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10258010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accidentallytechohazardous/pseuds/Accidentallytechohazardous
Summary: Takes place after the 1000 Year Blood War. Renji stays over at Ichigo’s while in the World of the Living, and has to simultaneously deal with the fall-out of surviving an enormous war while also mastering the art of making breakfast without spilling flour all over the counter.





	

The fact that Renji is a light sleeper surprises most people- sure, on a good day he’ll be just exhausted enough to crash anywhere he lands, but barring that Renji’s mind has a tendency to just forget to shut off. His thoughts wander away from him in no particular direction, seeming to have all the time in the world that Renji could otherwise be investing in valuable sleep.

Right now, the place that Renji’s mind keeps wandering to is whether or not Ichigo’s snoring is going to keep up the whole night, and at what point Renji should get concerned enough to roll him onto his side. It can’t be okay for a teenager’s sinuses to sound like that.

Normally Renji wouldn’t even be staying at Ichigo’s place overnight, laid out on the spare futon on the floor of Ichigo’s room as he currently was, and he can’t help but wonder how things were going at Urahara’s shoten. Though the shopkeeper and his motley crew took a sadistic pleasure in picking on Renji at every available opportunity, they were always ready to take him in and put a roof over his head. Not a lot of people would do that. Plus, he liked the kids, even if they could be terrors.

But now the kids were getting bigger, and Renji gleaned that there wasn’t quite as much room in the top building-shaped part of that shoten as there used to be. Jinta and Ururu had to be… what, thirteen by now? Growing like weeds, as tweens are wont to do. Now appears to be a good time to give the whole group some space. Hmm… with his hands behind his head and staring vacantly at Ichigo’s ceiling, Renji offhandedly wondered if Urahara and Tessai had plans for Jinta and Ururu to go to middle school.

Speaking of needing space, Ichigo’s room isn’t exactly the luxury suite, either. But it sure is better than the closet, the thought of which is enough to immediately give Renji leg cramps. Ichigo’s bed is pretty low to the ground; even with Renji lying on the guest futon he can see the outline of Ichigo’s shoulder as the kid tosses and turns in his sleep. There’s faint sunlight threatening to spill from the window blinds, just barely touching a carpet buried under miscellaneous mess, the laundry hamper and books and piles of manga pushed to the corners to make room for Renji and his overnight bed. If Renji stretches too hard, he risks banging his elbow against the metal leg of the desk chair.

After the fifth time he checks his soul communicator, Renji has to finally figure he’s not going to fall back asleep. His fingers flip open the plastic phone cover, something that is already looking outdated compared to devices that humans carry around these days. The digital clock blares whitely at Renji through the darkness, the numbers that disclaim the time is now 6:15 popping up in the corner.

Renji’s fingers slip around the smooth edge of the communicator, losing his grip and wincing as the phone slaps him hard in the face. He can’t be mad at Ichigo for still being asleep with how early it is, and on a weekend no less! But Renji could expire from boredom right here and now, waiting for his corpse to deteriorate into the carpet until it's indistinguishable from the dirty socks and the stray pizza stain.

As quietly as he can allow himself to be, Renji rolls over onto his knees and grasps around blindly for his overnight bag, where he packed all his hygiene stuff, a change of clothes for his gigai, and a typically ridiculous-looking soul pill dispenser.

Standing up and straightening out the kinks in his legs and back, Renji has no idea how Rukia managed to do all this sneaking around back in the day, though he has an idea it has to do with Rukia being much stealthier and smarter than he is. He can already easily imagine the smirk on her lips, Rukia giving him a heavy-lidded look of smugness with her thumb and her index finger pressed to her chin.“Oh, you had to sleep on the floor? Poor baby! Good thing you didn’t need to also worry about food, clothes, and finding time to sneak away and take a bath without getting caught by anyone in the house, or else you’d really be boned, huh?”

Anyways.

Renji tries to inch his way to the door as quietly as possible, but silence has never exactly been a friend to Renji. His bare foot somehow trips over a stray soccer ball, accidentally kicking it into a collection of Shakespeare’s unabridged works and a metal trash bin, resulting in a dull, heavy ‘clang!’

He grimaces, muscles freezing up as Renji waits for Ichigo snap at him for being noisy. After a dead minute of silence, a look over his shoulder reveals a lean shape still tucked firmly under the thick comforter, still breathing loudly and slowly with the weight of sound sleep. Ichigo’s head is barely a puff of bright orange against the downy mass of his pillow, and Renji feels a kind of strange… something at knowing Ichigo is safe and resting well. Something, like, fraternal or shit. Ichigo may be almost 18, but he’s still a kid. Teens need their sleep, and to not be stressed out to the breaking point with all the world on their shoulders. That’ll do, Good Boy.

During that long pause, Renji becomes suddenly aware of the closet door sliding open just a crack and revealing a sliver of darkness. It’s unnervingly empty until he looks down and sees something yellow and soft begin to pap-pap-pap it’s way out on squishy legs. That goofy little lion plushy/mod soul that Ichigo always keeps around looks up at Renji with what looks like a handkerchief wrapped around his tiny body as a blanket.

They share an uncomfortable amount of eye-contact, Renji not entirely feeling okay with looking into the creature’s beady button eyes. Finally, Renji holds a finger to his lips to indicate that the mod soul should be quiet. He, in turn, yawns and rubs his eyes with an air of indifference, and it’s kind of hypnotic to watch something so clearly inhuman try to mimic human expressions.

The plushy nonchalantly struts around Renji’s legs, and makes an unrealistic hop up to reach the top corner of Ichigo’s led. He lands face-down, spread-eagle at Ichigo’s feet, presumably falling back into unconsciousness.

At any rate, Renji appreciates his compliance and can now make it to the hallway to try and remember which door Ichigo said the bathroom was at in peace.

 

* * *

 

So pockets and buttons and zippers and things are really cool. World of the Living fashion is alright by Renji, even though he could do without the collar of his t-shirt feeling very tight around his neck compared to shihakusho. In this gigai, with these clothes, Renji pretty much looks like a normal human guy.

A normal human guy with bright red hair and tattoos all over. But still- normal, human dude. Luckily, getting avoided by people on the street for looking like some ne’er-do-well punk isn’t something that only happens in the world of humans.

Outside of Ichigo’s bedroom, the Kurosaki house opens up into a narrow hallway, which rounds a corner to the bathroom, the other two bedrooms, and the stairs down to the kitchen and living space. When Renji had first emerged to play a very dangerous game of ‘What’s Behind Door Number One’, the house had been entirely dark. Now, as he leaves the bathroom, there was a sliver of yellow light leaking up the staircase from below, standing out against the gentle navy blue of an early morning.

Going downstairs, Renji can’t stop himself from noticing details. He’s used to communal living, first in the dorms at Shin’o Academy, then in the barracks at the Eleventh Division. Everything was shared, and nothing was private. For so long Renji got familiar with being low man on the totem pole. He spent his teens and early adulthood waiting in line at the mess hall for his dinner, or having to climb up on someone else’s bunk to have a conversation. When the promotion finally came and Renji was a new lieutenant in a new squad with new private quarters all to himself, he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

There was never anything like this, in this house. A kitchen table with four chairs, for four members of a family. A refrigerator where anybody could eat anything they wanted at any time. Photos on the wall in polished, clean frames. Without meaning to, Renji catches a flash of orange in those pictures. There’s a round-faced, wide-eyed little boy beaming and waving to the camera. There’s a brown-haired young woman who holds him gently on her hip, next to a dark-haired man cradling two tiny babies in each of his arms.

Looking at those photos gives Renji a sense of cognitive dissonance. You might as well ask him imagine what it would be like to live inside a black hole, or to count how many atoms are in his body. It’s a concept too foreign and too strange for his mind to comprehend. It’s an emotion he can’t explain.

Holding this bizarre feeling in his chest and staring at the aged photo, Renji doesn’t become aware of someone else in the room until he hears a shrill squeak and the sound of cookery being dropped on the counter. In less than an instant, Renji is jumping on his toes and puffed up like a scared cat. “Shit-”

With the kitchen light on and the windows drawn open, there’s no need to squint into the darkness. Renji can immediately see a young girl with brown hair and big, dark eyes scrambling to recover a large ceramic bowl and the handle of a frying pan as it clatters loudly against the linoleum countertop. “Oopsy!” she chirps in genuine distress, which is a exclamation one does not usually hear paired with genuine distress.

Renji knows this girl, vaguely. He met her last night, vaguely, as Ichigo brought him inside and announced to his family that he had someone staying over (Starring Renji Abarai as “Someone”.) This is one of Ichigo’s little sisters, and although two names pop into Renji’s head he can’t remember which one matches this particular face.

 

“My bad,” Renji says instantly and with a flush of embarrassment that he was spooked by a little girl. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on ya’-”

He moves towards the kitchen with his hands raised to help her, but stops himself. There’s a social rule here, saying that if Renji can avoid crowding or touching a girl he doesn’t know then he absolutely, positively should avoid doing that and so as a result he ends up hesitating with his hands in the air like a goober.

The girl whose name is either Karin or Yuzu doesn’t need his help, however, and once her hands are free she puts one of them to her heart and gives Renji a flustered grin. “No, it’s okay. You just surprised me!”

The girl (Renji is pretty sure this one is Yuzu. Yurii? Yoni? No, it’s Yuzu) looks barely enough like Ichigo, sharing a jawline that is only just recognizable under Yuzu’s thinning baby fat. The resemblance halts there, however, especially with her brown hair loose around her shoulders, still fluffed up from sleep. There’s a youthful energy that rolls off of her in waves.

She seems rightfully reserved, as surely anyone would be when encountering their brother’s older and weird friend, but she’s warm about it. Yuzu is clearly the tactful one in this household. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry about that, I’m usually the first one awake until Dad gets up and starts jumping through windows.”

 

Okay... Concerning, but not Renji’s priority here.

 

“No, you’re fine. I was just gonna… take a walk or something.” Renji says, jabbing his thumb towards the door. This is, of course, a bold-faced lie. Renji doesn’t even have his jacket on, but since he already said Yuzu hadn’t woken him up, retreating back to Ichigo’s room seems to be a contradiction. “Get some air, you know?”

Before Renji can even begin to move towards the front door, Yuzu’s mouth opens in a perfect ‘O’ of horror. “Oh, you don’t want to do that! It’s absolutely below freezing out there, and you don’t have a coat. You should at least wait an hour for the sun to come out.”

She’s right, of course. And it probably says a lot about Renji that he would rather risk losing some toes to frostbite rather than continue an uncomfortable situation. He tries to shrug that sentiment off with a distinct lack of smoothness. “I mean, I’m not sure about that-”

“Oh, I know,” Yuzu decides brightly and struts over to the fridge and cracking it open, the legs of her oversized flannel pajama pants dragging on the floor at her heels, and she starts plucking things from the shelves. “Since you’re the first one down here, you can be the first to get pancakes while you wait. That way I can just start making the batter now and have some ready by the time Dad, Karin, and Ichi-nii wake up!”

Renji tries to protest more, he really does. He wishes that Ichigo were down here, or at least Rukia or someone to take the attention off of him. “Aw, you don’t have’t make anything for me-”

But Yuzu, unperturbed, unloads an armful of eggs and butter onto the counter. “It’s fine, it’s fine!” She presses, waving her hands and smiling so hard her cheeks are bright pink. “I try to always make pancakes on Saturday. It’s like my own little special treat for the weekend.”

At this point, Renji is out of options. Arguing the first time was just common courtesy. Arguing a second time was him being very polite. To turn her down not once, not twice, but three times would seem not only rude but also wasteful. What’s wrong with you, Abarai? Someone is offering to make you breakfast, you ungrateful dipshit.

(Even worse, Renji’s stomach decides to now remember it hasn’t been fed yet. It complains about this loudly and painfully. Renji is pretty sure everyone from space can hear it, let alone Yuzu.)

So, with Yuzu observing him over the lip of a bowl she’s depositing flour into, Renji obediently seats himself at the kitchen table.

With his elbows spread over the tabletop, Renji’s eyes shift from his interlocked fingers up to the kitchen counter where he can see Yuzu scooping flour out of a bag with the flippancy of someone who does this very much, and is very good at it. Her hands find measuring cups and spoons without the aid of her eyes, mixing ingredients like a hypnotic form of alchemy.

“It’s kind of early, huh?” Renji says, both conversationally and unnecessarily. “How come you’re up if no one else is?”

Yuzu shrugs, stirring up the dry contents of the bowl with a fork. “I dunno. I just like getting an early start to the day. Actually, I used to think it was weird how much Ichigo slept in on the weekends, but now I guess it makes sense that it was because of all that shinigami work.”

She looks up at Renji as she says that, and as his eyes make contact with Yuzu’s a bizarre kind of chill runs down Renji’s spine. His stomach churns with an emotion that isn’t quite guilt, but feels very much like it.

Renji had forgotten that after years of secrecy, Ichigo finally told his sisters about his moonlighting as a substitute shinigami.

How that must have gone over, Renji truly for the life of him can’t imagine. What must it feel like to Yuzu and Karin, to know how many times their brother had lied to them, or almost died without their knowing?

What must they feel now, for the strange and alien people who are in Ichigo’s life that asked him to do those things?

“Yeah, it can take a lot outta’ you, alright.” Renji says while scratching his neck with blunt nails, which is about one step above no answer at all. “But Ichigo’s real good at it, too. And he’s a part-timer, so if he needed to take a break he could leave it up to the shinigami assigned to this location or somebody.”

Yuzu, having apparently not heard any of the second part of what Renji said, drops her bowl and her fork solidly against the table. She looks very young, but also very patient. With her eyebrows knit together under her bangs and a thoughtful frown on her face, she has the look of someone who is trying to trying to solve a puzzle from a distance. To put together the pieces of a mystery with pictures on the wall connected by red strings.

“So you are one, right?” Yuzu says seriously, and the air of being an innocent, chipper little girl suddenly disappears. “A shinigami, like my brother.”

Technically, Renji is more than just ‘a shinigami’ and he certainly isn’t a fucking substitute. But the details of Renji’s rank seems pretty unimportant right now. At this second, Renji appreciates his anonymity. He appreciates getting to diffuse responsibility for Ichigo’s deadly extracurriculars. “Yeah. That’s me.”

For a minute, there’s just that tense atmosphere. Renji has no idea what is going on in Yuzu’s mind. She’s only one little thirteen-year-old, and not even one of the mean ones Renji’s met, but that only gives him more reason not to upset her. Fingers run through his hair as Renji wonders how hard Ichigo is going to try and kick his ass for pissing off his sister.

Then, Yuzu’s face breaks into a cheery smile again. “That’s pretty neat!”

Renji grunts something in agreement and tugs on his ponytail anxiously. He wonders what’s going on at the shoten right now.

“It must be cool to have all those crazy powers and stuff. I can see spirits pretty clearly now, but at the beginning only Karin-chan and Ichi-nii could see them. Even though they said it bothered them, I kinda worried I was missing out on something and they were just saying that so I wouldn’t be sad,” Yuzu explains, expertly cracking two eggs against the lip of the mixing bowl. She opens the shells up cleanly in half, pouring both yolks into the bowl without missing a drop. Renji is vexed and amazed.

“Maybe they just really didn’t think it was a big deal,” Renji suggests, now holding his chin in his hand. It feels weird to speak on Ichigo’s behalf; surely Yuzu knows him better than Renji could. “If you see spirits all the time, it doesn’t really seem amazing after a while.”

“Yeah, maybe…” Yuzu says, though she doesn’t sound fully convinced. She has a big, wooden spoon she’s using to stir the contents of the bowl thoughtfully, and as she does so, her eyes flick back up to Renji. “You’re from the spirit world, so does that mean you’re a ghost? You don’t look like other spirits I’ve seen.”

That question kind of hits Renji in the face, his mind blanking out automatically. It seems like an obvious thing to ask – was Renji ever a human, ever anything other than a spirit consigned to life in Soul Society – yet he can’t recall Ichigo or any other human asking that. He has no answer prepared.

After Renji fails to answer for too long, Yuzu’s face turns flushed and her hand raises to cover her face self-consciously. “Oh my gosh, is that a thing I’m not supposed to ask? I didn’t mean to, like, imply you look like you’re dead or anything! You don’t! You look totally alive! You don’t have to answer that, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay!” Renji does his best to smile, a little relieved that she isn’t trying to pin him against the wall with that scrutinizing gaze anymore. “Once spirits go to Soul Society, they don’t have the chains anymore. Sometimes people die in the World of the Living an’ they go to Soul Society. Sometimes they’re just born there.”

“So you are a spirit, then?”

“Yeah. Guess how old I am.”

Yuzu snort-giggles, curling her fingers around her cheek in embarrassment. “I’m not sure I want to answer a question like that…”

Renji grins, leaning back against his chair. “I’m over a hundred and fifty years old.” And he’s gratified when Yuzu looks suitably amused and enthralled.

“No way! I don’t believe you,” she counters, folding her arms over her chest haughtily. Yuzu reminds Renji more than a little bit of Momo Hinamori. With her sweetness, and her big, expressive eyes always waiting for Renji to finish his stupid stories, Momo makes for a great audience.

“It’s totally true. Lookin’ pretty good for my age, right?” Renji flashes teeth in his smile, and Yuzu dissolves into pleasant giggles.

“I guess it’s still kind of hard for me to wrap my mind around,” Yuzu confesses. She puts the frying pan on the stovetop and adds a generous dollop of butter, still looking over her shoulder to talk in Renji’s direction. “I mean, ghosts and a spirit world are one thing. But there being all these people with amazing abilities fighting bad spirits and protecting the world for hundreds of years – it’s like, ancient legends or comic books.”

The way she says it like that, Yuzu almost makes what Renji does sound cool and noble. And yeah, Renji can see how he fits that description. He does fight monsters. He does protect people when he can.

But when his mind flits back to the past handful of years, it doesn’t feel very awesome and heroic.

As if she could read his mind, Yuzu hums over where she’s pushing butter around the hot pan with a spatula. “Ichi-nii doesn’t tell us a lot about Soul Society. But he explained why he had to leave during the school year a few months ago. About a war.”

Of course Renji knows what she’s talking about. He swallows hard, and against his better judgement the images of broken earth and shattered buildings floods into his mind. Renji’s toes curl and he feels something travel down his spine from his neck to the core of him.

White stone. Red spots. The smell of iron and dust and the way it filled his lungs. Every friend Renji had who survived being taken to the Fourth Division to stitch back up their broken bodies. Nobody left unscathed.

Well. Almost nobody.

“Yeah,” Renji answers hollowly, and without really meaning too. He feels, very suddenly, like he’s far away from this place where there’s the smell of pancake batter and the warm hissing of a stove. From pale yellow sun outside and the neighborhood of human houses in a human city. Renji remembers suddenly that he is very, very far away from his home, and he doesn’t deserve to be here.

“That must have been terrible,” Yuzu continues, and all Renji can see of her is her back and her hair. She’s so tiny, he realizes. She is gentle and living and warm with life, and Renji understands for the first time why Ichigo would go through the strain of living two lives to try and keep her in the happier one. “I’m so sorry, I can’t imagine…”

She really can’t, and that’s what boggles him. Not even Ichigo can say he knows what it’s like to see people he’s grown up with and loved all his life dying and knowing, worst of all, that this is what they exist for. This is why they’re shinigami, so they can fight and be killed. There’s nothing else like it.

Rangiku’s gray and lifeless skin, looking too tight for her blood and her body as her chest stutters in its rise and fall.

Shuuhei’s post-brainwashing seminars after they scooped all the blood and guts back into him, making sure he knows what’s real and what isn’t.

Momo looking tired and frail, with her anxiety visibly flaring up each day as her compulsive scratching turn the old scars on her chest inflamed and red.

Ikkaku and Yumichika trying to coax Kenpachi into attending the mass funeral after the Eleventh Division was nearly wiped out, hundreds of names on a list who needed to have their headstones paid for.

Izuru sitting up but not really _being there_. His clothes are not washed. His dinner is untouched. He does not make eye-contact with Renji as Renji tries to look at his face and not the distinctive gap under Izuru’s clothes. It will be three months before Izuru looks at him.

Rukia burying her captain. Captain Kuchiki says goodbye to an old friend while Rukia mourns the closest thing she had to a father.

They are all alive – for now – but as the days of the Blood War feel still too close for comfort they might as well be slowly dying.

Renji is out of his chair before he realizes his body is even moving. “I’m gonna get some air.”

 

* * *

 

It is, as Yuzu predicted, extremely cold outside, surprising no one. Renji fails to care. Like he would worry about getting cold. He wasn’t homeless for a hundred years to worry about being cold. He had already watched his fingers turn from pink to purple to bright blue. He had been sitting with his back to the wind until his skin hurt and his throat was tight. Compared to that, this chill might as well be skimming off of his arms. Renji doesn’t need to worry about being fucking cold.

He sits down on the cement stoop, Renji’s knees curled up high to his chest so he can fold his body in. There’s nothing but a quiet dawn out here, the stillness of houses but no people in the streets. Birds are chirping incessantly somewhere. Frost tints the grass in the scant area of the Kurosaki’s lawn gray, like the filter of a photograph. It is, without any irony, like a ghost town.

So stupid. This is so stupid, Renji freaking out like it’s his first mission that went dicks up. He should be an expert at death, it’s his fucking career. It’s his life.

He’s been training all his life to be able to do this. To move on. To lose people. To be hurt. Ad nauseum. He’s seen horrible shit happen before Renji even knew enough to know that it was horrible. Right. Wrong. Life. Death. They aren’t distinct categories but sliding spectrums. A continuum, where both are always coexisting.

Renji is so, so tired of it. And he’s been so, so tired of it for longer than he realized.

It’s not fair. He didn’t ask to be put in a shitty world, trying to claw his way up just to get shit on again. He’s trying to be strong, so he shouldn’t be sad about other people’s pain. He shouldn’t be scared of losing people, or knowing that it will eventually happen again.

Renji’s not asking for a house with a family. For childhood pictures on the wall and pancakes every Saturday morning. He’s not selfish. But he wants some things. He wants to be happy, and safe, and it feels like he’s only ever been halfway full of those things, and that isn’t fair.

Renji drops his head between his knees, waiting for his breath to even out and fluffing up his hair a little to get himself right. It’s fine. He’s fine. He’s here and the world is safe (for now) and it’s fine.

Rangiku is alive. Every day her skin is more flushed with pink than the day it was more, gradually returning to her natural colors.

Shuuhei is back in work again, his wounds leaving nothing but a perfect circle intended in his arm and waist.

Momo smiles again, chastising her captain and wearing comfortable shirts that go up to her collar.

Yumichika and Kenpachi are dragging Ikkaku kicking and screaming into lieutenancy, a role he deserved but had so long refused.

Izuru is eating, at last. The Twelfth Division says he should be ready for his new prosthetic next month, and he talks to Renji about it with a note of impatience in his voice. He gives Akon a hard time.

Rukia is acting captain of the Thirteenth Division. She is so, so strong. And so, so good. Renji can’t not imagine she won’t be a wonderful leader.

Ichigo, Orihime, Sado and Ishida are alive. They get to be alive, and go to university, and grow up, and be with their friends in a world that was almost destroyed but made it to see another day.

Once his breathing is a little more slow and feels a little less like he’s trying to suck the air out of a balloon with a straw, Renji hears the front door open. He sees, in his periphery, pink boots around small feet. The sound of fabric sliding against cement as Yuzu sits down next to Renji wrapped up in a winter coat and mittens.

“I’m sorry for making you upset,” Yuzu says gently, and a gaping pit of guilt opens up inside Renji. Her little, wool-clad hand pats his huge bicep. “I know sometimes Ichi-nii feels like he needs to be alone, and like he can’t talk to us. I understand that. But I finished these, so you should eat them while they’re warm.”

She slides a plate onto Renji’s knee, and the heat of it immediately soaks into Renji’s body. He has to reorient his sitting position to accept the offering of a stack of pancakes into his lap. There are three of them, each one is precisely heart-shaped, dappled in chocolate chips, and has a thick frill of whipped cream around the edge.  


“Thanks.” Renji picks up the fork that Yuzu offers him and yanks off a sizeable chunk of the heart to shovel in his mouth. It’s very hot, and very sweet. “S’ good.”

“I used chocolate sauce in the batter.” Yuzu explains, beaming proudly.

“No kiddin’?” Renji conversationally continues. This does feel better. He may have momentarily made an ass of himself in front of this almost perfect stranger, but Renji should be used to doing that. He has quite a bit of experience. “How’d ya’ do the, uh,” He gestures with his fork to the plate. “The shape? The heart is really good.”

“Oh, that’s nothing. I just poured the batter out that way.”

“What? No way, I don’t believe you.”

“It’s not that hard!”

“Prove it.”

 

* * *

 

 

“What are you doing?” Are the first words being croaked out of Ichigo’s mouth when he stumbles downstairs, wearing pajama pants and a muscle shirt and his hair even more lopsided and unruly than it usually is. He observes the sight of Renji and Yuzu in the kitchen, both wearing aprons, through narrow, squinting, sleepy eyes like he’s not quite awake enough to process what’s happening.

“We’re making art!” Yuzu declares happily, while Renji snickers as he looks at Ichigo over the mixing bowl in amusement. “Nice pecs, Slick. You headin’ over to the gun show or something?”

“What’s wrong with this shirt -- no, forget it. Don’t answer.” Ichigo groans and rubs his hand over his eye and through his hair. “At least you two are entertaining each other.”

As he says this, Yuzu looks over Renji’s elbow to observe him drip batter onto the frying pan. “Ooh, that’s good. You didn’t drip at all this time. And you made a… bunny?”

“What? No, that’s a dinosaur.” Renji explains, pointing his oven-mitt clad hands at the pan. “See the head? It doesn’t even have ears.”

“I thought those were the ears.”

“That’s the tail.”

 

Ichigo watches them with a narrow look of disbelief from over the top of a newspaper, but the joke's on him because Renji has already eaten all of the chocolate chips so there’s none to go around. About an hour later, Dr. Kurosaki jumps through a window into his son’s empty room.

 


End file.
